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The Alumni

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Monica Rabassa '83 addresses a conference in Panama City last year.
Monica Rabassa '83 addresses a conference in Panama City last year.

Behind-the-Scenes Communicator

Monica Rabassa's job is knowing what people like. As president of Infosearch Communications, a communications and research firm specializing in U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets and media, she advises companies like Telemundo Network and Turner Broadcasting about what potential audiences wish to hear and see. She also uses this knowledge to create her own television scripts, thus doubly influencing her Miami community.

Rabassa's previous work experience provided a firm grounding for her present career. After earning an M.B.A. from the University of Miami, she took a job as an analyst for Spanish Radio Network and was soon promoted to research director, in charge of the New York and Miami stations. "That was the best learning experience I've ever had," she says. "Working at a radio station, you have to wear so many hats: you deal with ratings, with programming, with sales." Next she did a brief stint as marketing services manager for a Latin American cable network targeting women, but found the travel requirements incompatible with her family responsibilities. While searching for another job, she had so many freelance assignments that last year she decided to start her own business. The clients and assignments are diverse. "I create media plans for Turner Entertainment in Latin America-for cartoons, TNT, and CNN," Rabassa explains, "but I also do public relations for a local restaurant whenever they have a concert." Another project involved her as a consultant on the merger of the two largest television stations in Panama.

The business is satisfying, but Rabassa says what she truly enjoys is writing in Spanish. As the Puerto Rican-born child of Cuban exiles, she has a knowledge of the nuances of idiomatic Spanish that is in high demand, especially in the television industry. "You might think it's ridiculous, in a city that is 52 percent Hispanic, that people don't know how to write well in Spanish," she notes. "But we have a mix of languages, so people use Spanglish." As a freelancer, she writes articles for Spanish-language publications and documentaries for Telemundo Network and Univision. One script, about Mexican entertainer Juan Gabriel, won a Suncoast Regional Emmy. Another, for a documentary on domestic violence, has drawn a big response from viewers seeking more information each time it airs; in August, it won a national Community Service Emmy Award. "That is the special that means the most to me, because I think it made a difference," she says.

Rabassa says her ultimate dream is to write a novel about "issues of growing up Hispanic and the hardship of being a woman in the U.S. and succeeding." Nowadays, she works to share opportunities. When possible, she hires women freelancers, hoping to give them an outlet for their talents compatible with family life. She also interviews Harvard and Radcliffe applicants from Miami's Hispanic neighborhoods. "My first coat at college was from financial aid," she explains. "I was so broke, but I would do it again a million times, because I think the way I look at things was enhanced by my four years at Harvard." She says the students she interviews "are like diamonds waiting to be polished. Harvard would be excellent for so many of them. They would come back and help improve their community." Perhaps she sees such potential in these students because she has realized it in herself.

~ Brooke Donovan

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